Torah for now

Posts tagged ‘climate-change’

Eikev, Fires and Floods

As I write this, 300,000 are evacuated from Spain and France due to climate fueled fires. The whole earth is filled with G8d’s Kavod/Presence. Soon Spain will experience a total solar eclipse. People today experience a sense of the majesty of the solar system in viewing things so grand. In ancient days, it was a fearful portent, to see the sun’s power dimmed. The beginning of wisdom is fear of G8d – the Big picture of the Universe, (Proverbs 9:10) The dual meaning of the Hebrew yirah is fear and awe. We need tears, the thickening of our hearts to be cut open (Deuteronomy 10:16) We have just emerged from Tisha B’av, soon to be immersed in TuB’Av, the Biblical Holiday of Love, and comfort as the refugees returned from Babylonian Exile. More than ever we need hearts broken by awe and fear to fill with love.

It would take a couple of hard smacks from life before my heart could heal.

The theme of opening our hearts to bring tikkun repair to ourselves and the world runs through this amazing parashah in three parallel ways!

https://soundcloud.com/user-30824119/vakhalta1. Gratitude: Birkat Hamazon, the blessing after a meal, is partly here.  We are always yearning, hungry, But each item on your plate is grown from the earth, watered, harvested, delivered, prepared – a miracle. To stop, and really enjoy the food, is another miracle, and to really allow yourself a moment to say – wow I am satisfied! (It is easier without distractions, electronic or otherwise) I have found that even a brief blessing said with focus, or Kavannah can be transformative. Here’s a quick one based on words from Deuteronomy 8:10 V’achalta, v’savata, uverachta,et Adonai Elohecha(It is written that you shall eat, you shall be satisfied and you shall bless!)Blessed are you G8d for goodness, and holiness, for the land and for this food. Here’s a lovely version from Hannah Tiferet Siegel

2. Open our hearts to the vulnerable, the immigrant: because it is how G8d acts: 18) G8d upholds the cause of the orphan and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving them food and clothing.— (19) You too must love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

3. What if the rain were G8d’s tears? In Eikev Rain is clearly dependent upon our ability to act in justice and to love. Unlike Egypt where slave labor irrigated farms from the Nile, The promised land drinks water gifted by the Holy one. These passages are the second paragraph of the Shema, but here the command to love G8d has moved from singular to plural, communal.  The shema itself is a progression of love rippling outward from the center: beginning between your eyes and upon the heart of a person to your family/children, to the borderlines of your home, across your gates, and into the outside world, where, earlier we learn to love the stranger. It is parallel to the journey from Mitzrayim, the narrow straits, to the wide skies of freedom.

All depends on water, water is life. What if the rain were G8d’s tears, and they being withheld because of our heartlessness? What if this were the spiritual source of climate change?

I wrote the song Water planet inspired by the text and associated meditations from Rabbi Jill Hammer’s Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah

Water planet from the Breath of Life

Dazzling blue suspended in the night,

If we could hold it as Holy One might

We would feel the fluttering of life’s wings

How fragile our lonely home world seems

Our heart–beats sending lifeblood that we need

To heal the suffering our callous actions bring

To turn the sad melody G*d’s tears sing.

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Entering G8d’s Palace

Psalm 27, verse 4, read each day during Elul declares that we have one over-arching request, “to dwell in Your house all the days of my life, and gaze on Divine Beauty. What is this “house?” It is prayed for each early morning: Mah Tovu, what goodness is in this tent (our earthy home)….And as for me, with your great loving kindness, I will go to your house, I will bow in awe in your Holy Palace!

In my Mah Tovu practice each morning, I summon the emotion of awe at this time. However, recently contemplating the discouraging happenings, during these difficult times, I recall the “palace on fire” (birah doleket) from Midrash on Lech L’chah, where Avraham sees a beautiful palace on fire, and seemingly without a Master, when G8d answers him, “I am the master” of the palace on fire.

Perhaps the reason we cultivate love and awe at the world, a palace on fire, is to enter the palace, to protect the world we love. We in this nation have voted in power a false “master”, one who is amoral. Simply that should be enough to disqualify. The brilliance of Jewish tradition is that the Divine is not a power hungry god like Zeus, but who is our teacher, and our healer, and urgently cares about our moral integrity. Zeus only cared about his ego. In addition the whole earth is filled with G8d’s “Kavod” This word for “glory” also indicates Shechina, the feminine, indwelling aspect of G8d, the only sephirah directly accessible to us.

Halachah (Jewish law) clearly implies that it should be forbidden to consume fossil fuels due to the damages to future generations, and to Sh’khina herself. Creatures are dying, our children are/future is endangered. (Nina Beth Cardin, Sustainability as Mitzvah)

Fossil fuel  technology however is established and entrenched in our time, in the US it garners most of the public dollars spent on transit, and as such it enables our lives, to connect with our loved ones, to do mitzvot (what G8d wants us to do) to learn, etc. Which of these are the greater of our obligations? This is a terrible conflict of obligations, and calls us to activism to change the situation. The burning of fossil fuels, (among other causes ) also damages G8d’s presence on earth, Sh’chinah herself. This makes living with this technology a series of impossible choices to those on a spiritual path. When Shechina is loved, blessing flows to us. To love G8d is to care for the earth.

The amoral leadership now elected to power in the US is preparing to turn up the dial on fossil fuel use. This looming danger cannot be ignored. As we enter spiritually into this beautiful palace of a planet, “the day is short, the work is great and the Master of the house is pressing” says pirke avot. It is not ours to complete the task, neither are we free just zero it out. We are “eved Elohim” Servants of the most high. Even if we feel overwhelmed and weary. Perhaps Jefferson Smith was right that “Lost Causes are the only ones worth fighting for” (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)

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